- The Psychic Art of Tarot by Mat Auryn
- Published by Llewellyn for release in the UK, October 2024 and in the US, September 2024
- Recommended Pricing: UK £17.99/ US$19.99
- ISBN-13: 978-0738768342
- Reviewed by Jason C Dean
I was super excited when I first heard that The Psychic Art of Tarot by Mat Auryn was due for release in September! I had read and listened to Mat’s book ‘Psychic Witch’ and although Tarot gets a mention, I wished for a book that married Psychic abilities with Tarot. When I was a boy, I read Jonathon Livingston Seagull and later Carlos Castenda’s Journey to Ixtlan, I searched to find some cohesive instruction on how to access and use our super-normal abilities. There were clues here and there, breadcrumbs amongst the noise, that gave hints and tips. Tarot itself and the skills it develops seemed to be close to what I sought after. But I find that even with Tarot, there is noise and scaffolding erected upon and attached to it by external systems, and sometimes I feel these attachments are spiritual distractions. So, it is with these things in mind that when I was offered the opportunity to review The Psychic Art of Tarot, I grabbed hold of that ‘cubic centimetre of chance’ as tight as I could.
As a Tarot reader, I have gingerly explored the realm of psychic development and training, seeking to incorporate elements from other practices into my approach to Tarot. I did wonder why these other realms of human sensorial experience and application are largely stove-piped or siloed in their study and application. The Psychic Art of Tarot seems to answer my question, incorporating and integrating a wide bandwidth of psychic spiritual practices with Tarot in a simple, coherent, and accessible way.
Mat Auryn’s book is divided into 10 chapters with 78 exercises and is written in a conversational and friendly tone as if he is talking to ‘you’, making it easily accessible to all levels of an enquirer’s experience. The concepts and exercises described may take a little effort to wrap your mind around, but I am sure that with persistence and practice, you will achieve gratifying results. The Psychic Art of Tarot has the feel of a cookbook of sorts, follow the recipe instructions, and you will incubate the outcome you are after. Having said that, Mat tells us we are all Psychic, and like any skill, some are more developed than others. However, if you apply yourself and follow the step-by-step instructions, you can become a competent and confident psychic practitioner of Tarot. This leads to you being able to apply those skills to make your Tarot readings more expansive and powerful, and further enriching your life.
It is interesting to note that Psychic Tarot, as a heading title, does not turn up until Chapter Eight. This is because Mat gently takes you through a personal evolutionary process of psychic education and understanding. So, your training and knowledge are gradually built upon until you get to the chapter ‘Psychic Tarot’. A sort of culmination of all your training within the book. This is analogous to how the Eight of Pentacles is interpreted: a skilled craftsperson competently producing elaborately transformed high-quality products with ease time and again. The final chapters are somewhat like the introduction to a prologue of what comes next. I sensed the influence of Rachel Pollack in the final chapters as the references to Thoth, the Ibis-Headed god, distantly reminded me of Rachel’s epic book ‘A Walk Through the Forest of Souls’.
It’s a bit difficult to describe the nuts and bolts of this wonderful book in a short review. Mat has assembled so much of his practical, experiential knowledge into 265 pages. If you have read and are a fan of Mat’s other books Psychic Witch and Mastering Magic, you will find here that many of the concepts, techniques and topics explored in those books are applied here with a focus on Tarot. The exercises include the areas of Energy work, Psychic development spreads, Brain Wave Alpha training, Evocations, Scrying, Empath development, Pendulum work, Feeling the Timeline, saying hello to your Tarot Spirit Guide, Dream Incubation, Aspecting, Telepathy, Mediumship, Synchronicity, and meeting the ‘Angel of Tarot’. This list is just the tip of the iceberg!
During my first reading of The Psychic Art of Tarot, the two standout exercises for me were the Tarot Spirit Guide and Aspecting series, and the ‘Feeling the Timeline During a Reading’. When Mat introduces you to the concept of spirits and spirit guides, he importantly alerts and gives cautions on how to properly identify and work with your own Spirit Guide. Exercise 54, ‘Aspecting Your Tarot Spirit Guide’ was exciting to discover. I had been working with my Spirit Guide for some time and had thought about how I might integrate rather than have an externalized relationship. Mat describes this as an advanced exercise that is used when you are completely comfortable with your connection to your Tarot Spirit Guide. In this exercise, you allow your Tarot Spirit Guide to blend their energies with yours, and you wear them like an energetic mask or suit. You take on an ‘aspect’ of your spirit guide without passing over control. Mat describes how this exercise enables you to do Tarot readings from the perspective of your Spirit Guide and have unique and fresh insights and alternative interpretations. This can lead to further opportunities to empower your readings, and lead to furthering your personal spiritual growth and psychic abilities.
Exercise 32, ‘Feeling the Timeline During a Tarot Reading,’ is similarly a wonderful exercise. Here, you combine your now-developing intuitive and psychic abilities through an extension of your sense of touch, known as clairtangency. Mat describes the circumstances where you are well into a reading, feeling the psychic flow, and a question of timing, or when an event is going to happen, comes up. In this technique, you call on your Higher Self and use your hand and fingers to draw an energetic schematic diagram of a timeline in the air with five-year intervals. You can then use your hand to glide along the timeline, feeling for hotspots and then using your fingers, a bit like on a phone, to zoom into the timeline and explore again with your hand to predict when an event might take place. Mat tells us this technique is a game-changer, but it takes a lot of practice to get the hang of, but once you do the results are focused and precise. I should point out that Mat emphasises that this is a prediction technique and not a prophecy, so not set in stone.
As mentioned earlier, there are 78 exercises within the ten chapters of this awesome book. I have only provided a mere glimpse into what is available within its pages. I sense that Mat Auryn has produced another important living artefact in the modern Tarot space.
I cannot overstate how wonderful a book I feel The Psychic Art of Tarot is to discover. I certainly appreciate the work Mat Auryn has put into this book. He delivers to all of us a comprehensive collection of collated lifelong experiences (with a lot of life yet to live) in the form of practical exercises for our own personal evolution and power. This is not a gimmicky book full of jargon and fluff, this is the real deal, what you have been looking for. If you have ever felt you were from someplace else and have arrived here without an instruction manual or a map. Then, in ‘The Psychic Art of Tarot’ Mat Auryn gives you a guidebook, and the waypoint is Tarot. I feel that this book is a must-have for all Tarot practitioners who want to evolve and elevate their consciousness as they self-actualize, moving towards their ‘World’ portal event.
*Just a note for readers who are curious but not sure about all things ‘Witchy’. The Mat Auryn books I have read and listened to on Audible, particularly ‘Psychic Witch’, have many practices and concepts that are parallel, the same, or not too dissimilar to the broader community practices of meditation, affirmations, chakras, statements of intent, and other elements of Eastern mysticism. In ‘The Psychic Art of Tarot’, all the cultural witch/neo-pagan affectations and lexicon are homogenized. The instructions and processes are all explained in plain language.
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IG: @matauryn
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